Walking Off My Panic

I was still in bed when I felt the panic creep into my throat.

My therapist told me the best thing to do when I feel panic coming on is some kind of exercise.  Deep breathing helps with anxiety, but not with panic.  When we try breathing and it doesn’t work, it only makes us more panicky.

So I got out of bed and told Jon I was going for a walk.

I fed all the animals then Fate followed me through the back pasture and into the woods.  I walked the path from my vision mindful of each step.  Then I took a detour.  I wanted to get to my neighbors path.  To be able to be able to  walk quickly and unobstructed.

But there’s a lot of woods between the farm and the path.  And this time of year a lot of mushrooms too.

My plan was to just keep walking till the panic was gone, but a mushroom stopped me.   It was toppled over like a beach umbrella and it was only when I crouched down to take a picture that I saw the slug and then the salamander.

After that I stopped again and again, taking pictures of mushrooms.  My heart was pounding so much each time I stood up from taking a picture, I was lightheaded.

But I just kept walking and finding mushrooms.  They were red, white, brown, pink, tan, purple, yellow and orange.  Their shapes and textures varied as much as their colors.

Seeing them made me stop, and wanting to see more kept me going.

I noticed how so many of the mushroom were growing next to a branch or rock.  And it made me think how they were less exposed, even protected by the things they grew close to.  Like plants and trees growing along a fence line.  They are not as likely to be stepped on or mowed down.

There were time when I thought that I should get back.  That we still needed to eat breakfast and I had work to do.  But each time I had one of these thoughts, I resisted.  I needed to walk till my heart stopped racing.

An hour and a half later we were headed back home.

The deer skull still with its upper teeth lay upside down next to my boot.  I picked it up and placed it on a log.  Then I saw the mushroom, white as bone bleached by the sun.  I went back for the skull and placed it next to the mushroom.

After taking a picture, I found myself lingering as if at an altar.

The mushroom looked so new, just born compared to the skull.  One of the past the other at the beginning of its life.

Then and now.

And the words from Kamala Harris’ Presidential Campaign came to me like a prayer.  I’m not going back.  I said out loud over and over again. I cried and walked some more.  Until I realized I had passed the only path home, clear of thorny brambles.

I looked around me.  It’s not that I was lost, but my head was full,  and it was more like I just wanted to get to the path as quickly and easily as possible.

So I asked Fate to lead the way.

I’ve done this with her before I when I was truly lost and she got me back home.  All morning we walked in the woods together and I never once had to think that she might not be close by.   Fate is  the companion I imagined as a child.  I chose an animal because I didn’t trust human.

And now, when I don’t need her in the same way I did then,  she’s real.  And there for me in the way I need her now.

I followed Fate to the deer trail through the brambles, over the log that is too high and wide to stride over, through the break in the stone wall, past the little waterfall and onto the path from my vision, once again.